To play: Students sit facing a partner. (We have animal partners so I tell them to sit with their Monkey partner or whomever.) Both partners need a mini whiteboard, marker, eraser and the reading you prepared. Before the game begins, I ask them to read and translate it with their partner, to make sure that both partners understand everything that is written. Then the game begins: silently both students select a statement to illustrate and begin drawing it on their whiteboard. While students are illustrating, the teacher is counting down backwards in Spanish, from 20. When the teacher gets to 1, both students show their illustration to each other and the race begins. Student A looks at the illustration, looks at her reading sheet and has to figure out which statement Student B illustrated faster than Student B figures out which statement Student A illustrated. Whichever partner reads the correct statement out loud in Spanish faster wins the round and records a point on their whiteboard. After a few seconds the teacher starts counting down again from 20, which is the students’ cue to select another statement and start illustrating again. You can play as many rounds as you like….

Just to make it more fun, if students coincidentally both chose the same sentence to illustrate, the winner gets 2 points instead of 1.

Before you begin, really explain to them that as soon as they hear you start counting backwards from 20 they should erase their board and start illustrating a new statement. It gets a little loud when kids are trying to guess their partner’s statement, which I love….BUT as soon as I start counting I expect them to be silent, reading their paper and illustrating their next statement.

I’ve gotten surprisingly good at multitasking while counting down from 20- while students are playing this game I straighten my desk, respond to emails, file papers… While everyone is engaged and they don’t need me up front, I use those precious moments to catch up!